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IFLA/Brill Open Access Award 2015 goes to DOAB

IFLA and Brill are pleased to announce that the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), from the Netherlands, has been selected as this year’s winner of the IFLA/Brill Open Access Award.

The IFLA/Brill Open Access Award was created in 2013 for initiatives in the area of open access monograph publishing. This year the jury has chosen Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) (the Netherlands) as the most outstanding and game-changing initiative in the field. Earlier winners were Open Book Publishers (2013) and Knowledge Unlatched (2014).

DOAB, the Directory of Open Access Books, is the discovery service for open access books. DOAB provides a searchable index to peer-reviewed books published under an OA business model, with links to the full text at the publisher’s website. DOAB is a service of OAPEN Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to Open Access monographs. DOAB has grown steadily since its launch in 2012. April 2015, the directory reached a milestone with 100 OA publishers listed and over 2800 books included. Research has shown that OA books listed in DOAB receive almost twice as many downloads as unlisted books.

The jury of the IFLA/Brill award recognizes that in the few years of its existence DOAB has already proven its invaluable worth by becoming the central hub of the global infrastructure for open access book publishing. DOAB also works to enhance the quality of OA book publishing by requiring transparent independent peer-review procedures from participating publishers. In short, DOAB provides the scholarly community with a trusted channel to a vast and growing amount of open access material. DOAB has received wide recognition from the library world.

The jury also wishes to thank all other applicants, regretting that only one prize can be awarded. The very high quality of the many proposals from literally all over the world is a promising sign for the spread and growth of open access monograph publishing.

IFLA and Brill are very pleased to congratulate the Directory of Open Access Books. We look forward to handing over the award at the occasion of the IFLA World Library and Information Congress to be held in Cape Town (SA), August 2015.

IFLA: The trusted global voice of the library and information profession

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. IFLA is an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit organization with over 1400 members in 150 countries.

Guided by our Strategic Plan 2010-2015 and Key Initiatives, we work to improve access to information and cultural heritage resources for the global community in this rapidly changing digital and print environment

About Brill (brill.com)
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in 20 main subject areas, including Middle East and Islamic Studies, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, History, Biblical and Religious Studies, Language & Linguistics, Biology, and International Law. With offices in Leiden and Boston and a representative office in Singapore, Brill today publishes 230 journals and around 1000 new books and reference works each year, available in both print and electronic form. Brill also markets a large number of primary source research collections and databases. The company’s key customers are academic and research institutions, libraries, and scholars. Brill is a publicly traded company and is listed on Euronext Amsterdam NV.